Tremendous participation from Wilton voters, volunteers

Published 3:16 pm, Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Wilton had nearly 33 percent of our voters turn out at this year’s municipal election. Beautiful morning weather, enthusiastic candidates, and political signs around town drew more than 4,000 voters to cast ballots, support cookie sales, and meet their neighbors. We know we would have had even more attendance if the weather hadn’t turned chilly and rainy.

It takes a dedicated team to run smooth elections — almost 60 workers and many town employees. We sincerely thank our veteran Elections Moderators Jim Burch, Paul Lourd, Karen Birck, and Joy Ruterman, our Assistant Registrars Alex Corra, Suzy Curtice, Carol Peters-Dubrowski, Janet Anderson, Tina Gardner, Florence Johnson, Linda Fein, Ray Moskow, Fred Sindel, and all of our poll workers, on-call office assistants, and absentee ballot counters. Deputy Registrars Kim Nabulsi and Joy Ruterman also served as Head Moderator and Assistant Head Moderator, aggregating the town’s election results. In the days before the election, many of these workers helped with pre-election testing of our voting machines, supervised absentee voting, and answered numerous phone calls that came into our office. We wish we could recognize all of our workers by name. They serve their community on Election Day for long hours and low pay and we couldn’t hold elections without them.

We also thank many of our town employees who make Election Day possible. The Wilton Public Schools’ custodians, who open our voting districts at 5 am, obtain equipment for the polling places, and close up late that night, were wonderful—always courteous and quick to offer help. We also thank Wilton’s Department of Public Works for posting voting reminder signs around town, our town’s Information Systems Department for extra computers, our polling place set-up crew — Bert DeVito, DPW’s Bob Flemming and Pat Cavalieri — and our Town Clerk’s staff who processed more than 160 absentee ballot applications.

Thanks to everyone who helped make the election run so smoothly, to the candidates who stepped up to serve their town, and to the voters who showed their support.